el infierno musical review / fertile listening

Though I've only recently come across Christof Kurzmann's work, it stretches back to that early 90s post rock era. What do you say about someone who's projects have involved deconstructed re-workings of Robert Wyatt songs, electronica, long-form improvised pop music and musique concrète-inspired ambience? One recent work sees a clipped clarinet duet over programmed beats while someone sings dryly about their discovery / admiration of Eric Dolphy.

His latest, El Infierno Musical, brings together an international set of artists from wide-ranging traditions to record a suite of songs with lyrics translated from a mid-20th Century Argentinian poet born to Russian Jewish immigrant parents. Confused yet? The album uses sound itself as an invisible glue between genres and techniques. The resonant scrape of a bow across a double bass merges in the space of your room with the clattering buzz droning from a laptop. The songs are sung with a sense of pop but shadowed closely by clarinet. I listened to the Infierno, both marvelling at it and wondering what exactly I was hearing.

Perhaps it's inevitable: we've only been recording music for a little over a century and we only very recently have access to so much of it so readily. I distinctly remember hearing an NPR report on how the Nonesuch label's introduction of field-and-world music recordings hit the Western music world with such shock in the late-60s / early-70s. By the 90s, it all still felt new; the tools and technologies (like samplers) were even newer. It could be that we are experiencing the first waves of musicians that are truly comfortable with both what the entire world of music has to offer as well as the tools with which we currently have to manipulate it.

Posted by ams  

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